LRE Life Skills Class

I agree that the use of honorifics (a title, phrase, or grammatical form conveying respect) is very useful at a number of layers. But what are the proper honorifics to be used? The female gender has two generally used, Mrs. and Miss, while the male has only one, Mr. (There used to be the term “Master” for young males). I think it is not a positive situation to have the girls being segregated by age or marital status.  Older or married women are referred to as Mrs. and younger or unmarried women are referred to as Miss, while such a distinct does not exist for the boys. Is this fair in today’s world? What are your thoughts?

Posted by parent, Mr. Greg Krisilas.

Lots of kids have different activities after school like sports, music, art and religious school.  Having lots of after school activities can make you feel frustrated.  A planner can help you be more organized and less confused.

How do you know if you have too many after school activities?

Kids in school play violent games without thinking about the consequences. Some violent games are Star Wars, Indiana Jones, FBI, and Battle. Kids might punch, kick or smack someone on accident.  The other kid will say it was on purpose and then they won’t be friends any more because of a violent game.   The punishment can be detention, can expel the kid if done too much, or they are not able to play. A way to avoid these kind of games is to play a sport with other people and you might make new friends. If you can’t stop playing violent games, play a game like Army , Show Down , or Clones .V.S. Droids, which are all shooting games where you don’t get close to each other.

Do you have any other ideas?  How did previous generations get away with playing Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians and soldier?

Temptations can be good or bad, positive or negative. You have to keep self promises to add to your personal bank account.  When your personal bank account is full, you keep away from bad or negative temptations. For kids, following these guidelines could lead to solutions for many problems.

Playground problems are a good place to start. To decrease fighting, keep promises to yourself that you will “respond – not react” and walk away from temptations to start a fight verbally or physically.

Bad temptations can lead to problems but good temptations can influence others to copy you. For example, instead of eating a piece of candy eat something healthy like a carrot. These actions not only change the way other people think of it but the way you think of it too.

Can you name one good and bad temptation you currently have? Can you work on turning the bad temptation into a good temptation?

Life Skills class is mostly about planning. We are in fifth grade and switch classes a lot so it gets stressful sometimes. Sometimes you don’t have time to do your homework. Sometimes you forget that you had to do something and can’t study. What’s the solution? Plan ahead. In our life skills class we use part of our time to plan what we are going to do and when we are going to do it.

Do you have any special strategies for planning? How do you organize your time?

Every week in health class we write or block our time in our planners,which is a notebook that has dates the time on the side of the book so you can put the days you are doing stuff and what time its at.We do tis so we can plan ahead and find when we have tests, school activities, and any other things you do outside of school. Homework has been a big problem for many kids because they had forgot when things were due and happening this year. Now since we had got our planners that problem has soon fade away.

How has a planner helped you or not?
Why have some kids still not writing down what they have to do?

How many people in this grade get home then snack all afternoon? Pretty much everyone does it, including me. My mom has just read a few books on nutrition, and we’ve been eating healthier things ever since. Lightly salted potato chips, veggie burgers with reduced fat (try it at home, it’s really good) on whole wheat buns. A lot more things in our pantry are organic, and I’m getting used to it. We barely eat McDonalds at all now, and, after a while of it, it isn’t bad at all.

Question for the parents: Have you ever tried doing this before. My mom does it now, and she doesn’t feel that she shouldn’t be letting me eat that much. Try it in your household.

Question for kids: Does your mom let you eat more if you eat healthy snacks?

Do you like to learn by hearing (auditory) , touching (kinesthetic) , or by seeing (visual) things.  These properties are just ways people like to learn. It is good to know how you like to learn. if you are auditory then you need to hear it to learn it. A good way for those kinds of learners to learn are by using tape recorders. if you are kinesthetic then you like a more hands on learning experience. If you are visual you should use a whiteboard to write things down and read them.

A wise classmate said:

The best loser is the real winner. The worst winner is the real loser. — Mr. Whitman

In business there are winners and losers, and nobody gets an award for just participating. So we practice being good losers (and winners) every class.  Is it important to practice being a good loser?  What about being a good winner?  What strategies can you use to control your emotions to be good at either?

Your parents and grandparents grew up in a world very different from yours.  Many of your parents grew up in a foreign country.  Regardless of where they grew up, you discovered a major generational difference while conducting your interviews.  You discovered that kids in previous generations typically settled their differences on the playground by either getting over it or working things out, or by getting physical and hitting one another. Through our discussions in class, we realized that kids today tend to seek out someone else to help solve problems (like an adult or a teacher) or simply tattle on one another to get the other person in trouble.

Why do you think things have changed so much for your generation? What are the consequences of having someone else handle your problems?